


</strong> I Can Do It Better Than Her Part 2

by openmoments



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:33:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmoments/pseuds/openmoments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Steven  and Danny have been best friends since they were in kindergarten  together. Then, Steven moved away and they had to sort through life on  their own. </p>
            </blockquote>





	</strong> I Can Do It Better Than Her Part 2

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry that this took so long to get to those who wanted to read it. I've had it written for the longest time, and then computer problems have stopped me from posting it. But! It is here now and I hope you enjoy it. :) 

_**[Fic - Hawaii Five-0] I Can Do It Better Than Her Part 2**_  
 **Title:** I Can Do It Better Than Her Part 2  
 **Fandom/Pairing:** _Hawaii Five-0_ \- Daniel Williams, Steven McGarrett,  
 **Rating:**  PG-13  
 **Author:**  [](http://onyxexistance.livejournal.com/profile)[ **onyxexistance**](http://onyxexistance.livejournal.com/)   /[](http://openmoments.livejournal.com/profile)[ **openmoments**](http://openmoments.livejournal.com/)    
 **Spoilers:** N/A  
 **Summary:**  Steven and Danny have been best friends since they were in kindergarten together. Then, Steven moved away and they had to sort through life on their own.   
 **Disclaimers:** Do not own. Title snagged from Matisse's song [Better Than Her](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4snBmTzEt8).   
 **Prompt:**  The song Better Than Her (see above for link)  
 **Author's Notes:** So sorry that this took so long to get to those who wanted to read it. I've had it written for the longest time, and then computer problems have stopped me from posting it. But! It is here now and I hope you enjoy it. :) 

“Rachel! Rachel! Please, don’t do this to me!” he begs, his dignity a forgotten thing, one he’d drop right now if he still had it. “Don’t do this to us,” he pleads quietly as she storms out of the room, suitcase in hand, a bra dropping on the ground from the not quite zipped up top.  
    He reaches down to pick it up as he follows her, praying that this isn’t happening and that she’s going to turn around and he’ll be able to wrap his arms around her, whisper, “I’m sorry,” the way he really feels it, make her love him like she once did, like he still does.  
    She stops at the door, and turns around on her heel, hand snaking out to grab the bra from his hand, the straps getting twisted up in his fingers and pulling him a fraction closer before it all gets untangled and it disappears back into her bag.  
    “I can’t, Daniel. I really, really can’t,” she tells him, her voice broken and he thinks that this might actually be breaking her, too.  
    “Why not?” he asks, raising a hand to push the hair off of her face, and then stops half way there, hangs, and then he puts it to his own head, pushing it through his hair.  
    She bites her lips, eyes welling up in tears, and confesses, “I can’t lose you, Daniel. Your job...what would I do if anything ever....I would never be able to....I can’t lose you,” she says and that’s the last time she’s that open and honest and....anything  with him. He agrees to divorce her without the aide of the courts, but fights for his right to his daughter.

    It breaks him. She breaks him. No, they weren’t rich. They didn’t have a huge house or the newest of everything. But that was okay, because they were happy. Or, at least, he thought they were.  
    There’s the film strip of memories that torture him, all filled with her smiling face, the delicate laugh that was so distinctly Rachel. When she found out they were pregnant and how he’d press his hand up against her belly, feeling Gracie kick. How he held her hair through the morning sickness and her hand during the delivery. How they would tease each other and she was the only one who had any sort of permission to touch his hair.

    So, he fights for custody of their daughter and gets two days a week and is happy with that. But then, then  she marries Stan, a nice enough guy, if about a decade her senior and he gets a notice that they’re moving. The word Hawaii triggers the memory of a boy he knew seventeen years ago.  He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the memory, one he thought he'd buried years ago, after he realized that, well, Steven just wasn't his future anymore.

    But, just like Steven, the memory is persistent and won't go away, no matter how much Danny begs it to. No, it's there, the images of Steven from kindergarten onward. The march of time evident in the height changes as Steven goes from a scrawny dark haired little boy with shoelaces that would never stay tied, no matter how many bows they were tied into. First and second grade when he had front teeth missing and spoke with a lithp, and no matter how much Danny teathed him about it, he'd alwayth turn around and beat up the other boyth who mocked hith friend.  
    Grade six when Danny just stopped growing for the longest time and Steven was this leggy, gangly, yet somehow not awkward girl magnet. (But that was still at the time when all they needed was each other and Danny always knew Steven would come knocking on his door that evening, after supper, asking if they could play, "Just for a half an hour, Mrs. Williams.").  
    Grade nine and ten, when Danny grew those last five inches and Steven grew another five, six, seven  inches and towered everyone, that large ass grin of his the beacon that Danny fought his way through the crowd around his locker to.  
    And then....Danny squeezes his eyes and it comes in a rush: and then Steven moved and Danny's heart broke and things were never the same. That doesn't matter, though. Because he lost Rachel and might be losing Grace and he's not going to let another person out of his life like that.  
    So he does, he quits and transfers and lives in an apartment that makes the guy down the street in a box look good. He works his ass off, keeps his tie on, and accepts his status as hoale. (Because, no matter what, he's a Jersey boy at heart.)

    For six months, he sees Grace two times a week (if he's lucky and Rachel doesn't see how he'll dance when she twists that knife a little deeper into his heart) and falls asleep, bone tired, onto the pull out couch he pretends to call a bed. Six months.  
           But then, then something happens. By that time, he hasn't heard a thing about Steven McGarrett, not a word about the McGarretts. Nothing. And he figures he was being overly dramatic, a very Danny thing for him to do. So he relaxes and doesn't jump every time he sees a Caucasian six-foot-something dark haired guy cross his eyes. No, he doesn't. Because obviously he and Steven McGarrett weren't meant for more than the friends they needed early in life.

    Of course, as soon as he gets comfortable with that, as soon as he's done looking, done jumping, ready to move on, he busts his way into a garage (he recognized the name, but tossed it aside. "There's gotta be more than just one McGarrett family on the island.").  He hears something in the garage and slips his gun from its holster, yelling, "You! Hands up! Don't move!"  
    "Hey! Who are you?"  
    "Who are you?"  
    "I'm Detective Danny Williams.."  
    "I'm Commander Steve McGarrett and this is my father's house..."  
    "Put you weapon down right now."  
    "No you put your weapon down right now..."  
    "Just show me your ID right now!" he yells, his mind racing as soon as he comes face to gun with a boy (a men, really) he'd given up on ever seeing again. (And really, this exchange is just like the thousands they had as children, yelling over each other as their thoughts collided.)  
    The rest of it is a blur, but he realizes they're both as stubborn as they ever were. And that Steven doesn't remember him.  That, he thinks as he's sitting in his sorry excuse for an apartment, is the thing that's killing him the most.


End file.
